Did the universe just appear or is there a Creator?

It’s a dumb rule. You put an exclamation point directly behind your exclamation. Should you then not have anything further to say? Emoticons are not the end of the discussion.
Did the universe #-o (here we go again) just appear :-k (think about it) or is there a creator? :wink: (the shadow knows!)

The creator always was.
Creation is what he does.

It’s nice to get a bit of humour into the threads occasionally.

thanks. Why presume to know how the universe began or will end? It’s all speculation from the middle ground. My belif is that God, who always was, is and will be, created the known universe. The question why is not applicable except in human psychology, which can be used to describes god’s motives, but falls far short of the mark of creating because one’s being is creation or of loving because one is love. God does what God is without the thoughts of why or why not.

The creator is beyond human comprehension – beyond the understanding of human senses. There is a creator, but nobody can define the creator. We must learn to accept the creator and to submit and surrender to the creator.
-AiR

How can we submit to what we cannot understand? If there is a God who is something more than my understanding, how could I submit to him or surrender?

Bimbos do it all the time.

Well that’s a choice. We aren’t forced to do so. If we believe we should, we must!
-AiR

He asked “how?”, aka “by what means or method?”

God [or whatever] wants us to just be, otherwise he would be right there in the sky, visible.

No churches, mosques or temples, nor worship, song singing etc required.

If God were visible, only a fool would doubt his existence.

:laughing: … - … (giggles).

Are you inferring that God isn’t visible such that we should have faith? Bit much to create a universe on the back of, especially one that has been around for nearly 14 billlion years prior to our existence.

Yes, that’s what I was inferring. Existence of the universe and of Nature, of which we are a part, should be sufficient evidence for proof of the existence of a creator, for those of faith. For those who doubt, the creations are seen as fortuitous, with the bleak and sterile idea that they have nothing to do with us, i.e that we are a fluke of nature.

That didn’t answer the point though? The universe was around 14b years before us. however…

I don’t think our manifestation is fortuitous, random, or meaningless, this is a major flaw in atheistic thinking. Whatever manifests universe had a very big [infinite] purpose, but I concur it takes belief to add in that humans were part of the original intent. I say that only because such things are impossible to prove, but if one considers that it takes intelligence and not a lack of it to create the universe, then naturally intelligence is going to occur and was intended.

14 billion years is 14 seconds to a timeless god.
What point needed an answer? Refresh.

not to a God which is experiencing it! if the idea of god here, is to be not present such to experience the world, then that’s not the same god as the one which literally is reality as one - the infinite. everything and every moment is surely equally precious [to it], because nature has said divinity at its roots.

The best way to surrender is to accept that whatever happens in one’s life is because of the divine will. It is to know that there is a power in control and that things are not happening randomly. It means that there are laws of the universe that are playing and that there is a power beyond our understanding to which we must surrender, and we should surrender. The realization of such a power and the total acceptance of whatever happens is a clear mark of surrender.
AiR

I’d say God is both infinite and finite, both temporal and atemporal. We see these as contradictory because we are immersed in limited dimensions, i.e., in experiencing what our senses can fathom and extrapolations of that. We are Earth creatures who dream of the stars. Perhaps the universe needs our perspectives; perhaps not.

God seems very feminine to me. I wonder why they associate him as a masculine entity. Because he creates and dominates? Seems a bit erroneous.